What is the purpose of this?

There’s no purpose; I think he’s just trying to imply that he’s a great trainer by attempting things other trainers don’t; even though the reason other trainers don’t make young foals jump large obstacles is because it’s a terrible idea.

This foal’s joints won’t finish maturing for safe jumping until five and a half years old at the absolute minimum, and at this stage, it’s such a young baby that it’s just going to be stressed (both physically and mentally) by being asked to perform such a challenging task. Foals are very vulnerable because they don’t have much body fat and growing as rapidly as they do is exhausting (hence why foals nap so often), and they lack strong skeletal or muscular support. Their pasterns are also longer proportionally than adult horses, making tendon and fetlock injuries an even greater risk when jumping, because the likelihood of their soft baby fetlocks hitting the ground on landing is much greater than in a more mature horse. Not to mention injuring its hind limbs trying to scramble them over; foals are also often sickle hocked too at this age, so there’s just so much reason why no horse as young as this should be jumped.

Plus the fact that he’s running it with a looped whip in front of it also shows that it’s not even old enough to lead off a person yet, it’d probably bolt off to try and find its mother (as it should), if given half a chance.

Pat Parelli has so little empathy for the welfare of the horses he works with it’s just disgusting that so many people worship him. ETA: This is the guy my Mom is inspired by in her plans to work with Beastly, and I’m just going to get a bit shit faced and try and forget that for a while.

I got an invitation to go along to a parelli clinic thing to watch Pat Parelli himself “work with trouble horses” and such and I feel like a dick turning the invite down (mainly because the women who invited me are doing a demo that they’re super excited about) but I just can’t support this man in any way, shape or form. I can’t stand to look at him or even hear his name mentioned. Ugh.

One of the things I really get offended by is that the horses labelled as “troubled horses” by Parelli are rarely all that troubled, but the trainers make a big deal over everything, and claim that horses have attitude problems whenever they’re reluctant to immediately do something out of confusion or fear.

My mother actually used to be okay at basic horse handling, but the longer she’s been involved with Parelli, the worse her handling skills have gotten, to the point that I don’t even let her lead my horses any more.

Last year she was standing on the other side of the fence from my then 26 year old gelding Vandal, and she thought he was being “disrespectful” by gently bumping her with his nose to see if she had carrots (which is a reasonable question for him to ask, because pretty much all I ever do with him is feed him carrots and brush him), and her first response (rather than moving away from the fence or pushing on his nose) was to belt him across the chest in punishment. I know the official policy with Parelli training is to first ask, then provide escalating punishment for refusal (which is still a terrible training method), but this quick escalation to punishment is typical of what I’ve seen from many of the videos, clinics, and amateur practitioners. Of course I screamed “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” at her, which she also thought was disrespectful (which it was, because why the hell would I respect anyone flogging a well trained, and quite elderly horse) and wanted an apology for that (she definitely didn’t get one).

Didn’t stop her from suggesting that when I had to float load him I should take the Parelli method of negative reinforcement straight away, because he was supposedly being “dominant” by coming to me for smooches and reassurance when he was worried about fitting in the float. Never mind that he’s got a known history of claustrophobia, and was very obligingly continuing to try, and I’d allowed for plenty of time to get him on, because I knew I’d need to take my time with him.

If I need someone to hold a horse I just ask my father to do it these days, even though he knows very little about horses, and invariably within minutes of turning my back, I’ll be hearing “I don’t have any more carrots, I’m sorry”, “no there’s not anything in there, it’s empty”, “ow”, and “help the horse is biting me” and I have to walk back over and show him for the umpteenth time how to put his hand on the bridge of the horse’s nose and make it back up, or put his thumb out of the way when he’s hand feeding carrots.

But yeah, declining that invitation sounds like the right choice, I hope your friends move to a different training philosophy soon, because it’s hard to maintain relationships with people who get so excited about negligent trainers.

What I’m taking away from this: 

-NH and its practitioners are really fucking dumb

-your father is adorable

This is literal cruelty to animals and animal abuse. There is literally nothing okay about teaching a young baby anything remotely close to jumping; the physical aspect aside, I very, very, very, very seriously doubt that that baby is anywhere close to being mentally/emotionally developed enough to start training something like jumping safely. And it makes me think, if Pat Parelli is doing this to the baby, what else is he doing? Ugh… Parelli is absolutely disgusting, and it makes me sad to know that I’ve actually lost students to Parelli teachers. What makes me even sadder is that I’ve done visits on former students to check in with their parents and them (and every now and then run errands for the boss lady) and they’re rarely having improvements with their horses and their riding. A couple of them have come back to me and the farm, though, because they liked how we handled the horses better than how Parelli people did — which tells me that most of the time the switch was parent-based. It’s so sad, too, because those that owned horses usually came back with horses that were more fearful and difficult to work with. Like, good job, certified Parelli instructor.

It’s just like Milan and dogs. How sad.